Legacy of Hyne
by Kimmae
Summary: The defeat of Ultimecia happened in a time that did not exist, but her death still lords over all of them, no matter what they do. They cannot change the past. They cannot stop their future.
1. I

_First off, hurrah to a game that can keep you guessing and thinking and even biting your nails nearly two decades later. Thank you, FF team. You're pretty damn special._

_Final Fantasy VIII wasn't always a terrifying game for me. When I first played it as a teenager I felt cheated. "This is such a silly game," I thought. "The plot, the characters. Goodness gracious, the events—it's all just so wacky!" (Uh, yeah, I sounded like that as a kid. Didn't you?) Years after the fact, I played it again as an adult. Good God, how blind we kids could be (not you, of course, kind reader, just a series of little Kimmaes). I saw so much more intricacies hidden in every bit of dialogue and scene than I ever could have hoped to as a child. It wasn't so silly anymore. It was intriguing. In some parts, down-right creepy._

_Then I played through to the ending for the very first time. I couldn't quite figure out why, but by the time the last shot rolled and the sweet happy ending music lulled me into a false sense of satisfaction, I felt unnerved. After some brief research on the Internet, I found some pretty scary stuff to explain my fears. Since then I've been a big fan of the _Squall is Dead _theory. Most of it speaks to my experience, and it makes that impact and the end so much more hard-hitting. But one day, by accident, I was stumbling across the Internet and came across something that changed my mind. Something that was even scarier than the former theory's foundation._

**Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec are not actual Latin words, but an anagram meaning succession of witches...with the word love left over.**

_And so, the following was born._

_**TL;DR: HOLY CRAP SHIT GOT SCARY FOR ME**_

* * *

_Legacy of Hyne_

by Kimmae

edited by: Moonstruck Kitten

**I.**

"Madam President, this way."

Rinoa followed Jor through the barrier, leading to the emergency skyway, remembering the moment she knew Beth would become what she was now. She had only been nine, knobby knees and permanent mess in her hair. Rinoa stepped into her room to find a gaping hole where there should not have been, sucking in light and toys. As soon as Beth saw her the hole vanished. The dresser toppled over, the mattress bounced out from the bed frame, and the dollhouse split in two. Beth stared. She did not cry or cower. She did not look frightened. She did not look like Rinoa's daughter.

The cushions were firm, supple, and had rarely been used. Her companions surrounded her on the remaining seats, and the skyway thrummed to life, drawing her away from the palace. _The last time I'll see it,_ she thought. She had been in office ten years.

Laguna had fought for her campaign. Of course the public fought back; she had been a sorceress, unpredictable, dangerous. Even at her standing at the time, she was highly under-qualified for the seat in which she petitioned for. So had Laguna, back when he accepted the position, but that campaign angle had not worked for her. Odine and she had gone public on the success of containing her powers and the public was rightfully not convinced. No experience, other than mercenary work, also made her a poor choice as a presidential stand-in. There had been other candidates with strong platforms and strong contacts, but they had weak ideals for Esthar's future. All the while she kept asking herself if a life of politics is what she truly wanted, when the Galbadian civil war finally broke loose. Five years later, the public saw her in a new light.

The pod began to slow. She grabbed fistfuls of her dress on her knees, gently rocking back and forth. A habit she'd had since childhood. She let go and studied her hands. Her knuckles were starting to swell, the ache deep and persistent like small beasts gnawing on her bones. Liver spots were beginning to appear, the flesh going loose and thin. _Time went too fast._

"_No one can predict the future. There are no guarantees. Those were your words, Rinoa."_

She closed her eyes and put a hand to her chest, as if to tell her heart to stay for another time. Once stirred, it would not stop for anything, but would bull forward, playing through the motions like a tragic play that would always be on stage.

"_I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you..."_

"Madam President?" Kiros was looking at her expectantly.

"Forgive me." She stood and followed briskly. Jor led the procession, while Kiros and Ward flanked her, leading her down a stairwell decades, if not centuries old. The Moon Shelter had only been used once, and for the purpose it was built for. Now Rinoa fled into its confines to escape the inferno above that her daughter had raged.

There stood a door preceded by barriers and blockaded by steel several inches thick. Inside there was upholstered furniture, a chandelier, throw rugs, afghans, doilies, tea cozies—a culture shock from a different country, a different time. There was something Dolletian about the decor, and a small bit of home to it all too. But the _smell_. The wood had been polished with lemon solute, but a strong base of mold could be smelt underneath it all, poorly masked by a thick musk. Rinoa coughed and covered her mouth while Kiros worked on the air circulation. The fan did little to clear the air.

Rinoa took a seat while the others secured the room. Jor was working with a computer so archaic she was amazed it still functioned. Jor was a father of three, younger than her but just as dedicated to duty. He had only been by her side for a year. She learned he had a habit of licking his lips in between sentences, which left him with a small wet spot on his enhancement suit after lengthy discussion. She knew that he liked Balamb seafood and loved travelling to the ruins of Centra. She knew he would die for her, and she felt shame that she could not say she would do the same for him.

The old machine groaned to life, cranking and clanking like some novelty toy. Jor looked to her. Eyes shielded with large polymer lenses and face covered by his enhancement suit, she could still imagine the look on his face as he waited for her instruction.

The satellite phone would allow her to call anyone across the globe. She had many contacts that she could have called upon once. No doubt Headmistress Xu would be calling council with the other gardens to discuss preparations for mobilizing against Esthar. Ambassador Quistis of the United Union would be rushing from one staffer to the next, monitoring the cease of communications with Esthar and the closing the pan-continental railway. And Squall, her Squall...He would be fighting his past, his trauma, and his duty. As the head of department of Esthar Garden, he would have a heavy hand in amassing an army of children to fight his daughter.

She had led a revolution, redesigned a country, improved diplomatic relations across the globe and officially eradicated the threat of sorceress destruction, but when it came to the duty of facing her friends, repenting for such a horrible secret sixteen years old, she had no idea how to do it and be the president she set out to be. Who would she call, in her darkest hour?

"Thank you, everyone, for standing by me," she said, staring at the floor.

When the silence carried on too long, Ward approached the console, motioning Jor aside. He looked at her with his piercing, stoic stare, that wide frown-smile on his face. Even now, in midst of the worst crime she had ever committed, Rinoa could not help but smile at that silly look. "You have good counsel to offer?" she asked. He had fought with Squall's father in the first Sorceress War, stood by him when Laguna was given presidency and her once she inherited the seat. For a time she could talk easier with Ward than she could with Squall.

He punched in a few commands on the control key, scrolling through directories she did not recognize. Then he connected a call and waited.

Laguna appeared on the monitor. He had gone so grey since last she had seen him. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes had run along his face like cracks in ice, pulling his smile down into permanent worry. The distress of Esthar's fresh sorceress attack made those cracks run deep. "Ward?" He rubbed the stubble on his chin. "I can't say I'd know why a mute would call me. But it's good to see you're alive."

Ward looked to Rinoa. She stood, hesitantly, and took her spot before the console. Laguna melted at the sight of her. The telltale wince and leaning would be the cramp forming in his leg. His eyes were more white than usual, his lips more thinly stretched, the fear on every inch of his face. "What did you do?" he asked. The question was so out of place for him; he oddly sounded much like his son.

The weight of his voice was hard to hold. _What have we done? What have I done? Beth, I've doomed the world with you. Squall...I didn't want it to end like this. How did we get here?_

"I've known for years," she confessed. It was freeing and crushing to let it go. Someone knew that was not her, not Beth, nor Squall. The world would know now. It felt better to admit her guilt. At least that much she could do.

"Why?"

It meant so much more than one Rinoa it was an open invitation to reflect on her life. Every step she took had already been taken, and she could not have strayed from the path laid out before her even if she knew what would happen next.

"I loved them," she answered.

She watched his heart break in his eyes. He had loved his granddaughter dearly as well, showed her the fun hidden behind every corner as she grew. It had been a few years since she wished to see him, so his only memory of her was the small girl with the high giggle and the love of wind in her hair. Now she had destroyed one continent and set the oceans on fire.

Laguna held his head in his hands and Ellone approached the console from behind. Even at her age she was still handsome; willowy, angelic, an ease in her stride. She was decked in creme coloured silk and cotton, a green scarf loosely looped around her neck. As part of an ancient habit she held her hands together before her, one covering the other in a comforting embrace as she watched Rinoa through the screen.

Laguna did not hear his adopted niece approach. Her touch was feather-light on his shoulder, but the way he moved, it held much more power behind it. Without looking at Rinoa he moved off his chair. Ellone sat and studied the president carefully. Remarkably her eyes looked like Beth's, the same shape and colour, but with a look of love her daughter's lacked.

"I've lost them," Rinoa said.

"I know."

"I thought we had stopped it."

"Odine said the success of the procedure was uncertain."

"Not that...when we were young, when you sent us forward..."

"Ultimecia."

"She died. We...stopped her. Stopped the cycle. Now she will..."

Ellone said nothing.

"I don't know what to do," Rinoa said. "My Beth...my...I don't know what to do. Not without _him_."

Shoulders rigid, lump in her throat, Ellone looked prepared to jump from a mountain top. "I sent you forward once. And once I sent Squall to you, when you needed each other most."

Rinoa remembered; a striking memory. Ultimecia had possessed her to release a sorceress from her confines in space. When Rinoa woke, she was flung out into nothing, spinning endlessly, doomed to die that way. When life support was failing and hope fleeing, she heard him. Ellone could send consciousnesses to others' pasts. Squall was sent to her present, and he was right there with her. For a long time she thought it was a hallucination, a blind grasp at an excuse not to kill herself, but Ellone had truly brought them together. That was Rinoa's happiest memory, the time she knew they would be inseparable.

It was not a happy look on Ellone's telling face now, however. "And I think I..."

"What? What did you do?"

"I can't tell you what to do next. But I can take you to a place that might give you answers."

Rinoa's heart leapt up. "To...Squall? You'll take me to him now?"

"Not his present." She lowered her head. "To his past."

The sound of those words made her face drain of colour, as if ready to vomit. "You've been there before."

She nodded.

An impenetrable wall went up around her. She'd had to build it, after the guilt of knowing the blood of thousands of lives was on her hands. This gift Ellone offered could very well be the crux of it. It was a fear she needed to embrace, and willingly stepped forward to see it.

"Show me."


	2. II

**II.**

_So, what should I talk about when Rinoa gets here?_

He was kneeling before Angelo, who was staring out into the field beside the orphanage, silently awaiting answers. _Nothing about the sorceress, huh? I'm sure she's trying not to think about it. Who cares if she's a sorceress, right?_

Rinoa could hear footsteps through Squall's ears, heels clicking on the cobblestones. _Her_ footsteps. She was waiting at a distance, and Squall was trying hard to pretend he hadn't heard her approach, just for a few seconds more of solitude thought, a chance to hide and think of a way to act.

_You don't care either, do you? _he asked the dog. Angelo glanced his way and started wagging his tail, panting. _Rinoa's just Rinoa._

When she walked behind him to gaze out over the flowers, he couldn't pretend she wasn't there anymore. Angelo bounded off to some unseen game neither of them could join. Squall stood, trying to still his heart unsuccessfully.

He turned to see her watching her dog go. Rinoa had forgotten how she had been in youth. Her hair touched her shoulders still, black as jet, streaked with sun-coloured copper. Her skin was as flawless as a doll's, her shape slender and flat. For a moment Rinoa yearned to be that girl again, but the moment was all too brief. Instead of meeting his eyes, this girl dug her toe into the earth and kept her head bowed. "What will become of me?" she asked, voice still sweet and high. The president felt embarrassment.

"Don't worry about it," Squall said, in that way only seventeen year-old Squall could say, all cool attitude and impassive outlook. He had spent more of his life being racked with past demons than he had being the withdrawn introvert he'd intended to be forever. "There've been many good sorceresses. Edea was one. You can be like her."

Even stuck in Squall's mind, Rinoa could remember how she felt about his words. Edea had been a kind woman when she finally met her, but possessed by Ultimecia, Edea had been a source of Rinoa's nightmares, even years after she had disinherited her sorceress' powers.

Rinoa still could not look Squall in the eye. "But Edea's still...I can't guarantee anything either. If Ultimecia possesses me again...You saw me. She controlled me in outer space and made me break Adel's seal. What might happen next time? What will I end up doing? Will I end up fighting everyone?" She put a hand to her chest, clutching at the Griever charm Squall had let her keep. "Scary thought, isn't it?"

Squall turned from her and walked away silently, the way he'd always been wont to do—go away inside while in the middle of a conversation like he could pause life anytime he wanted—and thought to himself, _Rinoa...Even if you end up as the world's enemy, I'll...I'll be your knight._

Suddenly years of tumultuous fights and grim coexistence fell into place. Rinoa wanted to reach out to him from the future but found no words. It was conflicting to find her former husband had made such a bone-chilling oath.

"If I fall under Ultimecia's control again," Rinoa continued to tell Squall's back, "SeeD will come kill me, right? And the leader of SeeD is you, Squall. Squall's sword will pierce my heart..." And Rinoa could feel Squall's own heart grow heavy, like her past words had sapped the strength from him to continue on. "I guess it's okay if it's you, Squall. Nobody else. Squall, if that ever happens—"

He turned on her. "That's enough!" He waited until she finally looked him in the eye. "I'll never do anything like that. The sorceress I'm after is not you, Rinoa. My enemy is the sorceress from the future...Ultimecia."

"Ultimecia lives in the future and possesses me. She uses my body as her extension in this world." She explained it to him as if he hadn't been present for those past few months, in that condescending manner she used to personify so often as a teenager. Then she stood tall and eyed him sadly, dropping her voice. "How? How will you save me?"

"I'll come up with something," he said ineffectually. "There's gotta be a way..."

Her eyes carried over the scepticism and the pain she held.

"Don't worry. Trust me."

She sighed. "I trust you." She shifted her weight back and forth. "Well, until you find a way, maybe...maybe I should stay in Esthar, at that memorial? Wouldn't that be better?"

Rinoa could not want anything less. She had been so scared when they led her up the steps to her cryo chamber, the same they had trapped the tyrant Adel in nearly two decades before. Squall had come to cut a path for her escape

_my knight came to rescue me_

and they had flown far, leaving the country behind, Rinoa clutching Squall's arm close the entire way.

"No, that'd be pointless. I'd just end up going after you again." It had given her such sweet relief to hear him say it, unbeknownst to him. "Rinoa, just stay close to me."

He had said that almost every day for fifteen years, though those words had taken on a much different meaning for their marriage as the years sped on. Right now they lit a candle of hope and despair for Rinoa, but in the past nothing could have made her happier to hear.

"Oh! Those words!"

"What?"

"That's what started everything."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't remember?"

"Something I said?"

"Oh, just forget it."

The happiness quickly receded from her eyes. Rinoa could feel the confusion and desperation within Squall to set everything right, though passing it off as inconsequential. "No, it's because of the GF. That's why I forgot."

Once they had learned junctioning themselves with Guardian Forces displaced memory, Squall and the team used it as an explanation for nearly every forgetful moment. "That's just an excuse," her past self said, to drive home the point.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah," she answered, voice quavering. She looked to her boots again. "Can I tell you a story?"

Squall waited in silence. Even if he had tried to dissuade her, Rinoa knew this girl version of her would tell it anyway.

"I had a dream. It was a scary dream. We make a promise. We promise to see shooting stars together. I get dressed up and put on your ring. But the thing is, I can't remember where I'm supposed to meet you. I start to panic. I really want to see you, Squall, but I don't know where to go. I start running through the mountains, the desert, the plains...through Timber, Balamb, and Galbadia...When I realize I can't run any longer...I...I just want to see you so badly. So I scream, 'Squall, where are you?' Then I woke up. I was crying."

She had had that nightmare on occasion throughout the years. Almost nightly after the divorce went through.

She was hunched over, as if trying to disappear on the spot. "I'm sorry. You don't have to say anything. I just felt like I had to tell you."

Squall looked out over the field. "It was just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it." His words were halted, for he was thinking about his same fears as well. Rinoa whispered, _It's not just a dream_, but Squall mistook it for his own thought.

"I guess you're right."

He gestured vaguely. "How about this...I'll be here."

Rinoa studied his face and Squall resolutely watched the flowers. Finally she asked, "Why?"

"The reason you couldn't find me is because we haven't promised yet."

"Promised?"

"I'll be waiting for you. If you come here, you'll find me. I promise."

She would have cried if she had eyes, but the young girl in front of him smiled so wide it was hard to imagine this memory would become heartache. "I'll be here too. It's a promise!" She hopped up and down. "Thanks, Squall! Next time

_next time_

we'll meet for sure!"

* * *

_They'll all be—angry at me. I'm...scared._

_I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you..._

_I'm scared, Squall. I don't wanna go back._


	3. III

**III.**

And then she _was _Squall, seventeen and filled with misplaced spirit, and everything was black. The world had no form, but he was in it. Only him.

"I'm not alone...If I call out, they will answer."His voice was quiet yet strong, as if coming from the end of a twisting tunnel, though she was right there in his mind, a pocket of his soul reserved only for her. He _did_ call out then, but his voice was just too small, lost in the void. He moved or tried to move, seeing shapes but no light, breathing hard but not feeling any air against his face while he ran.

"Where is everyone?" he cried. "Rinoa! Where are you? Zell! Selphie! Quistis! Irvine! _Rinoa_!"

Though disembodied, Rinoa felt her palms running slick with sweat, her hair standing on end, and a painful need to run_._ Years and years ago, they had fought the sorceress from the future in a time compressed as one, and when it all unravelled at her death they all came out together...without Squall. Rinoa had thought on the place they had promised to meet, and she found him lying in a field,_ their_ field, limbs askew and body so still she thought he was dead. He had told her he remembered nothing before he woke in her arms...

_Am I...alone? Rinoa? I want to hear your voice._

_I'm here, Squall, I'm here,_ she said. He whipped his head around, hearing whispers in the world that did not exist, spirits and demons calling to him from every corner, watching him in his torment. Sweat formed on his brow.

He ran and ran until his knees buckled under him. _Which way do I go? I can't make it back alone._

_Oh, no, Squall,_ she said, unheard. _Please, we're so near, you don't have to go through it alone._

But he did. The solitude ran too deep, and he knew no other way to go. He sank further down the hole, shadows and whispers circling around him. His memories, his friends, her. He looked up, startled. "Rinoa?" he muttered, breaking into a desperate run. He kept calling her name, then the call became a shout, then a howl.

He had to stop. He spun in circles, the realization dawning on him that he was helplessly lost. He thought on Edea, his beloved matron, but she did not appear before him to give guidance.

_Where...am I?_

A desert. The world filled in around him as if it had always been there. The heat pounded down from a grey-green sky, shifting and warping like light refracted through a pool. Wind caressed his face like the creeping touch of death. The ground was cracked from years of drought, the air abundant and thick from a world without life. Squall regained his bearings and began to walk aimlessly, watching the horizon for a glimpse of someone. Of Rinoa.

He walked for hours. The day's light was not fading, the world did not change. On he marched. Rinoa could only watch, her voice too quiet to be heard here.

It was when he began to slow that she felt the tension tenfold. She could feel it in the air, in Squall's heart. The world began to darken. And the desert ran out.

Squall stood at the edge of the cliff and stared out into space, the grey-green sky shifting far below (or was it within arm's reach?). Squall mustered his energy to turn back around, hope dissipating at the sight of the world ending a dozen yards behind him.

_I'm dying_, he thought.

_No, you're not!_ She felt the love she'd held for him so long ago revived, she so desperately needed him to hear her. _Listen to me, Squall, you survive this. You've always survived. You're not alone!_

He collapsed again, and this time she could feel that he would not stand again. She needed to show him a sign, some way of telling him that Rinoa from the past would be there soon to save him.

A feather was falling from the sky. White. Soft, small, fragile. Squall watched it, spirits rising.

Rinoa dreaded its descent. Instinctively she knew it was to be avoided. It was not hers, this symbol that reminded Squall of their time together. He held out his hand to touch it, and Rinoa held her breath.

The sky rippled, green turning to gold, grey to orange. A seventeen year-old Rinoa ran past Squall, tacky blue sweater-dress flapping behind her, the angel wings printed on the back perfect to a tee. He never saw her face. _Don't look, don't look_, she pleaded, but Squall could not hear.

"Rinoa," he said gently. She was standing amongst the flowers in their field, watching the eerie sunset that was not there. "Rinoa! _Rinoa_!"

When she turned, the world folded in on her face.

* * *

The Balamb Garden ballroom. It was the SeeD graduation party. It was the first time she had seen Squall, the last she had seen Seifer before it all ended. Graduates were dancing together, smiling faces and smooth steps. Squall's eyes were on her while she looked up at the skylights, watching a shooting star. She looked at him, but her face was not whole—blacked out, blurred, out of focus. She pointed up.

Graduates were dancing together, smiling faces and smooth steps. Squall's eyes were on her. Always on her. She looked from the skylights to him, translucent here, black and opaque there. She pointed up. The orchestra never left the first bar, that same awful cheer playing over and over again.

She felt Squall tighten. _Is she dead?_ he thought.

_No. I never died, Squall,_ she tried to say, but she felt the doubt.

Graduates smiling and dancing perfectly around a girl in an ivory dress with long black hair and no face. Her eyes flickered in and out of focus, two chips of obsidian that swallowed light. She pointed up.

Again and again she pointed, dozens of times, and each time a part of her was missing. Never whole. Never quite there.

Rinoa standing dead on her feet, a blank white slate where her face should have been.

The spacesuit tumbled through space, a black blur where she should have been.

Someone else was standing at the ball in her dress. Then no one was standing there at all, graduates smiling and dancing to the same aggravating tune.

_She should not be here, _someone seemed to whisper. Squall seemed to hear it.

But he put her back there, he kept imagining it. _Rinoa walked towards me at that dance. She was there. _He said it with an authority laced with worry. But when Rinoa did walk towards him in the next image, she faded away into a black shadow, walking right through him.

Controlling the images was out of his depth after that. He saw his charm about her neck that wasn't there. He saw he and his friends charged down on a beach by a Galbadian Black Widow. The _Ragnarok_ drifted listlessly through space, untouched, unmoved, unreachable, and neither he nor Rinoa ever found it. There was a queer inversion and they were on the Garden after it mobilized. The wind was playing through her hair on the observation deck and carrying whispers from a hundred different souls trying to tell him something, and she smiled at him with an incomplete face while Seifer

_that never happened_

embraced her from behind.

Then the night of the assassination attempt. His matron, his sweet, sweet matron, possessed by the sorceress they were destined to kill, stood on the float trapped between the gates on a road in Deling, but it wasn't Edea standing there, it was Rinoa, and she was before an altar

_junction machine_

he had never seen before. She was pointing up in her ivory dress, then she was turning to Squall and forever walking towards him, always fading into shadow.

A scream was in her throat that could not escape, as if caught so far down in a nightmare where one could only whimper where they would shriek.

He kept trying to hold her and she would dissolve in a still wind, falling to pieces and reconstructing so that he could lose her all over again. He kept thinking about watching her spin through space, him gliding towards her. _I saved her_, he said firmly. Then the onslaught of eyes: her eyes, Edea's eyes, Ultimecia's, even Adel's, and women back and forward through time—_Beth's_ eyes, those were his daughter's eyes!—and then hers last as she fell toward him in the memorial, falling from the prison he had freed her from...

The last images came directly from his imagination. Horrific as they were, the more horrifying thought was their meaning, his understanding, the secret he had kept from her years longer than she kept Beth's secret from everyone else.

Darkness reigned. And when Squall opened his eyes again, she was there, in their field where they promised to meet. Looking into his eyes, holding him tight, smiling for having found him again.

The dread of his grievous error pulled him down.


	4. IV

**IV.**

"Zis is ze Hustera," Doctor Odine said to Rinoa, gesturing to the statue behind him. "It vill contain your sorceress powers."

It looked like a woman walked through a wall of stone to be immortalized there. Squall's hand tightened around Rinoa's to look at it.

"At least, it has the capabilities to do so. Zere is no way of calculating the success rate of such a procedure. It vorks similar to the Odine Bangle you are both familiar vith, but instead of suppressing, it absorbs."

"Like our draw system." Squall stated it as a fact rather than a query.

"Very similar, yes."

Squall watched Rinoa study the statue mournfully. Seifer had been sealed away in a prison much like this one, though his was not made of stone. He remained frozen in time within Sorceress Memorial on Estharian countryside, confined to decades of solitude in punishment for aiding and abiding the sorceress in domination and destruction. _It could have been any of us_, he thought. Seifer had volunteered for it all the same. Begged for it, even. Squall knew Rinoa desired her penance for the crimes she committed under the influence of Ultimecia

_my crimes_

but where Esthar gave Seifer his due, Dr. Odine offered her salvation instead.

"What will we do if it doesn't work?" she asked.

"I vill go back to my notes, find a different solution. Ultimecia cannot threaten you anymore. Ze past is in ze past. Or, rather, her past no longer exists until she is born in ze future. In a sense, er...never mind."

Squall knelt before her, holding her hand between both of his. He tried to smile reassuringly at her but it did not reach his eyes. Wan, thin, and faltering. "I'll be here by you. I'll never leave your side."

The girl lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it. Reluctantly she let go of him and stood. "I'll go."

She had to wear a skin-tight body suit to enter Hustera. It enveloped her too tightly, making her feel like a prisoner in her own body. Three steps led to the slender door that would close her inside until the work was done. Unlike drawing magic, which took all of a handful of seconds, she would be inside this machine for an hour or more while it devoured her magic for itself.

_It has to. It has to work. _Squall clenched his fists tight. Sweat soaked his palms in his gloves._ We have to change the past somehow._

"...c_an't change the past," Ellone's voice echoed from far away._

_No,_ Rinoa wanted to scream. _No no no no!_

The girl took each step slowly. A low thrum came from within the machine. She hesitated. Squall did too. Suddenly he was afraid

_maybe shouldn't_

she would never come out.

She stepped inside.

The statue was almost of a form with her, with an inch of room to spare. The door shut behind her. He thought of Seifer. How did he feel moments before his sentence? After? When they shut him inside the cryo chamber and filled it with his sleep? He had been a boy seduced by a demon and paid dearly for it. All that brought Rinoa comfort was that he might live again, long after they were dead. For Squall, all he could get caught on was what would happen to the world when he and she were not there to prevent the inevitable.

The thrumming stopped. Sound receded. Time slowed down significantly. He paced. He sat. Dr. Odine chattered at him and he paced again.

_What will I do if it doesn't work? h_e thought. _I was her knight. She won't need a knight anymore. She _won't_ need a knight anymore. _He sat again, with his head in his hands. _Go away, oh, please go away, don't do this to me!_

...and then she returned.

When she stepped out of Odine's Hustera, she looked ethereal. At first his heart leapt out of his chest, and his fingers itched for his gunblade

_Squall's sword will pierce my heart_

but when she blinked the fog cleared from her eyes, and his. Instead he met her on the steps and helped her down. She gazed up at him as if to see him for the first time. He held her arms at the elbow as if she were a fragile statue herself, bound to break at any moment.

"I can't feel it," she had said, and he held her tightly.

They were able to go to the press about the success of the operation. At least three weeks of interviews were conducted under closely monitored house arrest. She spoke with other doctors who studied sorceresses. A series of psychologists and therapists came to her and Squall daily. After Hustera had been launched out of orbit, far off on an empty trajectory of several light years, the sorceress era was declared at a close.

In the coming years he found her in the company of diplomats, dignitaries, ambassadors and advisers. All of them seemed interested in her past, but more than that, they were interested in her remarkable ability in public relations, her sharp ear and keen eye for politics.

Time flew forward; now they were twenty-three, pregnant, holding each other before bed. In the darkness, Rinoa caressed his shoulder and whispered, "I want to run for office, someday."

His grip on her loosened. He looked down at her

_sorceress _

and forced a smile.


	5. V

**V.**

Ellone brought her back to the present. Everything felt wrong, from the floor beneath her to the skin she occupied. She tried to stand but her legs failed her. Jor and Kiros were there to help her up again. "Madam President, Madam President," they kept saying, but their voices were small and far away.

She heard Ellone louder than all of them. "I'm sorry, Rinoa," she whispered.

After the war against Ultimecia was done, the group had fallen apart. Each had suffered in his or her own way, Squall most of all. He had told her the post traumatic stress disorder was triggered by the battle with Ultimecia. Even when times were darkest for him, when he was mentally unstable and unfit for duty, much less a marriage, he had always clung to her desperately, always wanting her at his side. "Don't leave me alone again," he would say. "Just stay close to me."

It was guilt that had him clinging to her.

She was gasping but not breathing. She beat on her chest to rid herself of the pressure, the pain, the overwhelming horror. Ward held her wrists. She shrieked.

"Madam President? Madam President! _Rinoa_!"

She held in her breath like it would be her last and looked at Kiros, wide-eyed and stiff as a board. A soft rumble shook the mirrors and the fine china in the cabinet. Dust fell from the ceiling. The earth sighed from far, far away.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she said, trembling.

"We need a doctor," Kiros said. "Ward, see if you can alert someone to come to the Moon Shelter."

Her gentle giant nodded and began to leave. Rinoa called for him, a pitiful sound a moping pup would make. He turned for her nonetheless, waiting for her wish.

"Please don't leave me alone," she begged. She couldn't be left alone with the truth.

He grabbed for her outstretched hand, holding it between both of his. They were large, rough hands, but held a softer touch than even Squall had ever given her. With one frown-smile, he was gone.

Ellone was still on the line. She took in a deep breath. "Rinoa...I'll show you one last thing, if you'll have it."

"I can't. I can't take any more." Her hands were cold and dripping sweat. "I can't change it. We can't—we can't change what he did. What _we_ did."

"It won't be the past."

Ellone had reached out and twisted her insides mercilessly. Oh, how sweet it would be to be with her knight now, so long after they had last been together. A bitter sweet pain, but one she longed for nonetheless, despite that she knew...that she knew...

She stood and gracefully walked up to the console. The walls rumbled a little harder this time—a painting fell off the wall. Ellone looked at her with heavy eyes. Rinoa must have looked decades older, for she felt each more second so much harder to exist than the last, like her time had come so suddenly and she had already accepted the end.

"Take me to him."

* * *

The fire had engulfed the ship, and the only way out was through the shattered glass, down upon the highways of Esthar where his daughter had driven the _Ragnarok_.

He held a gunblade in his hands. It felt heavy, though it was made from feather-light adamantium. He had his family's names engraved into the handle, and along the spine, the likeness of Griever. He ran a finger along his wife's name. His daughter's he could barely touch.

He threw it out the window.

_Squall, can you hear me?_

He tilted his head. From beneath a ruby dragon wailed and howled, claws ripping the hull like tin as it climbed. His daughter had loved giving life to her toys when she was young. Instead of a stuffed moogle she had animated the statues in the atrium of Esthar Garden this time, and the beasts cut a swath through his staff and students until none remained standing, the walls covered in blood. Burning blood and skin was a dark smell, an evil one that made him sick from the horror alone.

_Squall, it's Rinoa._ The effort of reaching him was exhausting, like screaming out to him from across a crowded coliseum.

"Rinoa." He grew heavier until he could no longer stand. Sat upon the floor, he took off his jacket, laden with badges, and threw that out the window too, then unlaced his shoes, took off his cuff links, rid himself of his tie, threw out the watch, deliberately chucked the junction bangle. Lastly he took off his wedding band, which he had taken to wearing around his neck on a chain, just like _she_ had when she had worn his ring and charm all those years ago. He stroked the ring's curves, inspected its shine, gently rubbed at a scratch mark on the inside. He placed the ring on the floor, then pushed it with one finger until it slipped from sight, plummeting to the highway below.

Rinoa could only watch, stricken silent.

As the ring disappeared, the dragon came into sight. Squall backed away from the edge as it breached the threshold, unfurling its impossibly long wings. Beth floated up from behind it, her back to him. The black wings tattooed on her shoulder blades had sprouted quills budding black feathers.

She turned in the air, arms outstretched, black eyes upon him. She eyed him like a snow lion sized up prey. "Father."

He saw his little girl again, smiling brightly and asking to play air plane, while he slumped back on the couch on one of his dark days, the days where he was just gone, for the guilt of living with them was too much. He wished he could go back and reach out for her tiny hands. At least that much he could have done; make the best of the terrible decision he had made for the world.

"What will you do when I'm gone?" His throat was so dry, his tongue thick. "What will you do when your mother is gone?"

She lowered herself to the deck, arms at her sides. The veins leading to her hands and feet grew dark, the tips of her fingers and toes pitch black, as if bitten with frost. Her face was so pale. The likeness between her and Rinoa was uncanny, not as a daughter, but from a terrible, terrible memory, lost in time.

"I will mourn for you." She announced it as if he had asked on the weather.

_And who will mourn for you? What will you leave yourself in a world you've destroyed?_

Her bare feet clicked on the floor as she approached. He stared at them, repulsion growing to dread. The dragon climbed farther in behind her, an inferno glowing deep within its throat, silhouetting its teeth.

"I will never be mourned," she said to his unspoken question. "I will make a new world for myself, for we were never meant to live in this one."

Squall turned to stone as the dragon stood taller on its front legs, fire growing stronger within its throat. "I won't fight you," he said, watching her pet.

"I know. Nor will I fight you."

_Please, Squall, run away,_ Rinoa pleaded. He had long ago shut out her voice, however. Now she could only watch.

"I want to cleanse the world, Father. Fire burns the slate clean. A chance to begin anew. There are too many flawed creatures and broken tools

_too many tools_

in this world. I must rid them from this place."

_You cannot hope to make the world a better place. Death never brings good tidings. True humanity is shared. Alone it's emptiness. You're a tyrant, a devil._

"No." She spread her arms like wings. "A god."

The dragon roared. Bethany, wreathed in flame, beautiful and terrifying to behold, like the entity that she housed. Squall shielded his eyes

_can't change the past_

as the world burned.


	6. VI

**VI.**

Ellone was in front of her again. An unaccustomed line drew between her eyebrows to an effort she rarely had to exert. In an instant the look changed.

"He just...only a second ago," Ellone muttered. First the shoulders rounded, then her face went red, saliva dripping from her lower lip.

Rinoa approached the console and ended the call. She lowered herself to the floor, hands hanging from the control key, no strength to hold up her neck. The sobs came on slow and silent at first. With each image she conjured up, the pain would double until it crushed her lungs and twisted her spine. They had married young, had Beth young, fell out of love all too young. His smiles were not cheap, and they were so few, each of them etched on her eyes like burns from staring into the sun. The sound of his voice on his good days, the look on his eyes on the bad.

"The cost was too much," she said. Every time, it would be too much, and they would pay it again and again.

Kiros knelt beside her. He was well into his sixties but still lithe and stoic as a torama. Looking at him made her feel old. Embarrassed. Childish. She wanted to disappear. They all must know. How could they not know?

More paintings were shaken from the walls, the china cabinet tipped over, and the couch bounced three feet back from its dusty spot on the Shumi carpet. The monitor cracked down the middle. "We're several miles down," Rinoa remarked to the screen.

"We may not be safe here any longer," Kiros said, failing to be calm. "We need to relocate."

"Ward isn't back yet."

"Your safety is the primary objective."

"I understand." She remained on the floor, crying softly, wanting to cry harder but finding it hard to remember how.

Kiros brought her to her feet. Jor was already at the door, and when he opened it, Beth stood in the doorway, Ward impaled on her black hand above her head.

One of them yelled before being swat across the room. Rinoa tried to stand but landed hard on her knees again, head held down, forced to listen to bodies colliding, shouts and screams, tearing flesh and cracking bones. When the silence resonated, punctuated by a rhythmic drip, Rinoa was released, but she dared not move.

"I've been searching for you. Ellone and Father showed me where you were."

The last time she had seen Beth was months ago. She had come home one night a different person. Her black dress was revealing, and on her shoulder blades were two tattoos of sharp black wings, the skin still raw and red from the laser that burned them there.

A mother would have scolded her child. Discipline for such a foolish mistake. Mistake. Beth watched her mother carefully, inviting her to speak. Rinoa left for her study and locked herself inside. Her daughter had left by morning to pursue her ambition of ridding the world of humanity, though officially it was national news that the president's daughter had been abducted.

"Why did you do this?" Rinoa asked, thinking on the tattoo. Those terrible black wings.

"It's what I was born to do." A real hand closed around Rinoa's hairpiece, lifting her off her knees, off the ground—impossibly _strong—_and as she screamed Beth shushed her. "It will be over soon."

A moment of ecstasy had her believing her body hit the wall before the rest of her did, she was thrown so fast. Tingling from scalp to toe, she remained lying in a puddle of her men's blood and intestines as Beth approached. Her hands and feet were black, drowning, dying for air. Nothing human remained in her pitch black eyes.

"I wanted to thank you," Beth said, squatting before her mother. The _smell. _Rinoa needed to recoil but her body would not move. Ward's head laid on the floor before the couch, just beyond Beth's hip, frown-smile twisted into a hideous grimace. Kiros lay broken in half over the couch. Beth stroked Rinoa's cheek with fingers of ice. "You protected me when you should not have. Even if you hadn't, I would have found another vessel. But this one grew stronger. Very few sorceresses have lived as long as I have. These powers rarely come this far."

Rinoa shut her eyes, screaming inside for Ellone to hear, to bring her back to the past, to leave her there with Squall

_I want to stay here with you_

in the _Ragnarok_, where she had wanted to stay forever.

"You'll go back there, someday," Beth told her mother, then set her on fire.


	7. VII

**VII.**

The journey was days away, but she had no use for sleep, and sustenance had become less and less essential as she grew older. Her dragons hunted and slept as needed, and found her again when they needed to. She chose to walk there. Travelling by foot seemed appropriate for him.

The rocket gantry towers were the first thing she spotted. Three long fingers stretching for a sky the colour of burned skin. It looked a minuscule thing in the distance, but far outgrew her expectations by the time she stepped on the promenade. It was made for a swarm of people, yet she was the only one there.

Her dragons she bid to stay behind. The world swallowed the sound of her footsteps, the wind quietly whispering lies in her ear. The sun was setting as she climbed the front steps, which funnelled into a small opening with a tall door. Esthar's flag was on display above it: a crescent moon eclipsed by another celestial body, and within another crescent moon encircling a shining star, a beam falling from it to signify the Lunar Cry phenomenon. She tore it down on her way inside.

No light reached this place. It was remarkably clean, and though decades old, looked new, like an untouched time capsule. The first room was an observation deck, overlooking the main chamber where the cryogenic treatment occurred. An emergency light lit up the floor; a lone blue signal that throbbed every few seconds. It lit up the line of capsules inside, each standing tall as if on guard, their arms crossed over their chests.

She lifted her hand above her head and let the fire envelop it on her way down the spiral staircase. The flames flirted with the blue pulse climbing up the walls. The ground was laid with iron grates a few feet high, for beneath her ran hundreds of tubes and wires leading to the cryo chamber. A smirk played on her face at the sight of it. With a flick of her free hand she ripped the machine apart. Shattered plexiglass scattered the length of the hall, ricocheting off the sleeping statues, the prisoners within peaceful in hibernation. Crimes punishable by cryo sleep were legalized in the case of Seifer Almasy, after the second Sorceress War in her mother's youth. He was the first of a dozen traitors to give up his life.

She had only heard stories of him. She took the time to appreciate him as a piece of art. By now he would have been her parents' age, if he hadn't been condemned for his crimes, but he was _her_ age now. She reached out and traced his jaw. The covering was lined with dust, cold as stone. Handsome. From the first she knew he would be hers, but she did not know she would be his as well.

Like conducting an orchestra, she gestured his cell apart carefully, unwrapping a paramount gift. Gas released in an angry hiss. The preservation cover lifted from his face like a veil. His arms unfurled to his sides as she gently lowered him to the floor. He coughed until he cleared his lungs of fluid, air bringing life back to his body. His limbs shook as he tried to stand. She stepped forward so her feet were in his sight. There was a fog in his eyes when he looked up at her. "Rinoa?" he muttered, throat dry and clogged from years of disuse.

"No," she said. She ran her fingers down his forearms to his hands, guiding him to his feet. A myriad of thoughts passed through his mind and his eyes. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. She looked up into his eyes, hungry. "Bethany."

He studied her face, trying not to see Rinoa and slowly realizing how long he had been gone. He saw where he was, the criminals and scapegoats and friends sealed alongside him. "You saved me," she heard Seifer think. "Sorceress."

"Yes, Seifer," she said, standing on tiptoe for a chaste kiss. "My knight."


End file.
